America’s unique—and largely implicit—system of racial identification is one of many complex institutions that newly arrived immigrants must navigate. Recent literature about immigration (e.g., Adichie, Americanah [2013], Sharma, Family Life [2014]) highlights this steep learning curve alongside more overt challenges like language and customs. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words about narratives from any period in which immigrants negotiate racial categories in the United States.

The long twentieth century offers multiple examples of dramatic progress brought to a halt or even seemingly thrown into reverse: Freud writes about the first World War as foreclosing faith in human progress; the late ’60s and early ’70s brought complications to the Civil Rights movement and student movements; and the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001 undermined the narrative of American capitalist triumph that had held sway since the end of the Cold War.

This panel calls for papers that stake a claim in the cultural significance of representing alcohol or alcohol consumption. How do these representations relate to alcoholism as a disease and the alcoholic as an identity category? Does the text evaluate alcohol abuse morally or politically? Do communities organized around alcohol consumption facilitate social movements based on class, race, sexuality, or gender?